Skip to Main Content
Contraction Pairs

Contraction Pairs

Learn about word contractions by playing a drama game.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Index Cards

Steps

  • Step 1

    Teach students about how words can be shortened by replacing one or more letters with an apostrophe, thus forming a contraction. Have students come up with some examples and list them on the board.

  • Step 2

    Have each student create a pair of index cards - one with the contraction and the other with its two-word counterpart.

  • Step 3

    Give the pair of cards to a pair of student who will dramatize the meaning of the words on the cards.

  • Step 4

    As they are performing have the rest of the class try to guess what the pair's words and aligned contraction say. Then discuss how the two people with similar cards enacted the meaning in similar or different ways.

Standards

LA: Apply knowledge of how language functions in different contexts to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading, writing, speaking, and/or listening.

ARTS: Describe what an image or performance represents.

ARTS: Combine ideas to generate an innovative idea for artmaking/composing and presentation/performance.

Adaptations

Did you know that the apostrophe in time descriptions (1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, etc) stands for "of the"? Extend this game to learning how to tell time, where students match a time written in digital form (3:15) to a picture of its analog equivalent.

Play Contraction Concentration! Use the index cards created in the activity to play a game of concentration, where students have to turn over pairs of cards to create a match of a contraction and its two-word counterpart.